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Tuesday, 18 March 2014

Love at First Slight by J. Marie Croft

I was so excited to read this book when I heard the premise;
Pride and Prejudice, but with the genders swapped! So we see Miss Elizabeth Darcy, the proud granddaughter
of an Earl, going into Hertfordshire to stay at the estate of the Widow Davenport
(nee Bingley) where she meets William Bennet, one of five brothers, and a very
poor match for an heiress like her. I thought this was a very interesting
idea. I know there are Pride and
Prejudice-inspired books out there with a gender-swap element, but the ones I
know of are modern, and I thought that a historical gender-swap would be harder
to make work due to societal constraints at the time.

The Characters: Firstly, not all of the characters are
changed, although nearly all the main ones are - I thought this was entertaining in
its own right in a lot of cases. Mr Bennet is a slave to his nerves, and
determined to get his 5 sons married.
Mrs Bennet is a reclusive alcoholic.

‘In no particular order of precedence, Flora’s main
occupations were reading ribald romances, sampling grapes in all their myriad,
fermented forms, and maintaining her husband’s frangible nerves’

There are five Bennet brothers, but the order is different
from Pride and Prejudice. Here Martin
(Mary) is the eldest and the heir to Longbourn, followed by the handsome
Charles (Jane) who is apprenticed to Uncle Gardiner. William (Elizabeth) is next, he is training
to be a clergyman and will be in line for the living that Longbourn can award,
once the present incumbent inherits an estate, which is expected soon. William doesn’t feel he’s well-suited to be a
clergyman, his dream would be to inherit an estate. Twins Christopher (Kitty)
and Laurence (Lydia) follow, they are intended for the army.

The family are
friends to the Lucas brothers and all look forward to the arrival of Mrs
Davenport’s party, the supercilious Bingley brothers (Casper Bingley in
particular I found very amusing, due to his foppish clothes and Miss Darcy’s
distain for him). When Mr William Bennet
meets Miss Darcy, he asks her to dance and is turned down with little ceremony,
deemed only tolerable. He is teased by practically everybody about this, and
his vanity turns him against Miss Darcy, so that he doesn’t realise when she
falls prey to his ‘smouldering eyes’:

‘With a start, Elizabeth
realised she had stared for what must have been an improper extent. Proper
duration for ogling deacons was not a subject touched upon at the London
seminary she had attended.’

Unfortunately for Miss Darcy, William doesn’t appreciate
that she has feelings for him and he dislikes her heartily, although he feels
attraction for her that he fights against admitting.

‘William’s hand dropped to his side and developed a quiver.
He slowly backed away. The woman is
downright dangerous. A god-awful jolt from her hand at Netherfield, and now she
is the source of inexplicable palsy. Heaven help de Bourgh should he embrace
her’

I thought it was interesting to see the characters with
their genders swapped, William Bennet is a much less alpha male type than Mr
Darcy in Pride and Prejudice (understandable, as Darcy causes many events to
happen, a role taken on by Miss Darcy here), but he’s quite light hearted and
loveable. I was not impressed with his
rudeness towards Miss Darcy though! Miss
Darcy was a very interesting character. She was quite spoiled and used to
getting anything she wanted, willing to be a bit improper and forward in
achieving this aim, rude and snobby, but she was quite different behind closed
doors, sweet, loving, and hoping to be loved in return. This brings me on to my
next point...

Sexism – I wasn’t expecting to get this from reading the
book but the way I reacted to the characters’ qualities differed when applied
to the opposite gender. I really wasn’t
expecting this, and it caused me to wonder how far I have double standards
between the sexes. For example, the
Hunsford scene in Pride and Prejudice left me feeling extremely sorry for Mr
Darcy, but also fairly sorry for Elizabeth Bennet as it was a bolt out of the
blue. There is a Hunsford-style scene
here and I didn’t have much sympathy for William Bennet, in fact, I wanted to
line up behind Lady Cassandra Fitzwilliam (Colonel Fitzwilliam!) for his blood
due to his lack of gentlemanliness.
Nearly all my sympathy in this scene was reserved for Miss Darcy, and
the amount of forgiving she has to do over the course of the book made me feel
that she was almost saintly. This
certainly gave me new appreciation for Mr Darcy in P&P, the man takes on a
family from a lower social class, who are not especially good company for
somebody who he has loved steadfastly even though they’ve made their disdain of
him clear and it’s cost him a load of money to do so! It also highlighted to me how many instances
of rudeness towards Elizabeth Bennet just exist in her head, viewed through her
prejudices.

Miss Collins is another character I felt differently about
than her male counterpart in Pride and Prejudice, but I put this down to
societal reasons – Mr Collins was full of self-importance, and Miss Collins had
to be more humble, and I found her much more likable as a result, as does her
cousin.

The Difficulties – The difficulties with gender swap in a
historical setting seem to me to be how you get key events to happen. Getting Mr Bennet to ask Miss Darcy to dance
when he doesn’t want to isn’t too hard, you have to get him forced into a
situation where it would be rude not to ask (Elizabeth is impertinent to Darcy,
but she doesn’t cross the line to absolute rudeness until Hunsford), the real
difficulty is getting a Hunsford style scene – how can you get a situation
where William Bennet would be so rude as to tell a lady that she’s the last
lady in the world he would ever marry?

Also, to my understanding, a gentleman wouldn’t usually ask
a lady of a higher social class to marry him, unless he had a fine fortune,
which Mr Bennet doesn’t have. It’s
particularly problematic that Miss Darcy is an heiress, as a man with no money
proposing to a woman with a lot of it would very likely be seen as a fortune
hunter by the lady’s relatives (and in 20-year old Miss Darcy’s case, her
guardian, the Earl). When you add to
this the fact that he doesn’t initially want to marry her at all it becomes
especially problematic! I also couldn’t foresee how Laurence could be
endangered by Miss Wickham. I will be
fair to Ms Croft, she manages to work around all of these issues in what I felt
was a plausible way, although I despaired as to how it would be possible.

The Story – the story is largely very similar, although
there are areas which differ as Miss Darcy would obviously have less say over
her life and movements than Mr Darcy would, although she is one hell of a
heroine, she is a lady who makes things happen! There were some differences in
storyline that I felt differed unnecessarily from the original, but other
changes were necessary due to the gender reversal. Since Pride and Prejudice is more focused on
Elizabeth’s viewpoint this is also focused on William Bennet’s view of
things. I would have liked a bit more
Miss Darcy, but we don’t get more Mr Darcy in Pride and Prejudice so I accept
this!

The Wordplay – Ms Croft is obviously a lover of words, and
there are quite a few puns and instances of alliteration. If you don’t like these they may begin to
grate on you, but I don’t mind them.
There are quite a few word-plays within the text that gave me a smile:

“Pig-headedness runs in the family, as I have often
reminded you.”

“And I have steadfastly refused to believe it.”

The Areas I Felt Could Have Been Improved – Not much
actually. There was the odd American word like ‘dang’ and I thought there was
too much mild swearing, feeling that gentleman should have refined the language
a touch more around ladies. There were some things I might like to have been
different, but when I thought about it, often these were reflections of Pride
and Prejudice, for example, I would have liked more time in Elizabeth’s head,
but we get very little of Darcy’s feelings in P&P so it was fitting.

In Conclusion: I really enjoyed this book. I liked the initial gender swap premise, I
enjoyed how the author changed things around to make it work and I appreciated
that it made me reflect on my own reactions and consider new things about the original
story. I found the book very readable,
in fact I read the first 70% in one sitting and gave myself a headache because
I didn’t want to put it down! I just
couldn’t see how the author could give this couple a happy ending. I found myself thinking about this book after
I read it, which is always a good sign, and I had LOADS I wanted to say about
it, so kudos to you if you’ve made it to the end! For these reasons, I would rate this book as
a 5 star read.

2 comments:

Great review and I agree with you that this is a terrific read which is hard to put down,! I loved the gender switch and it was well written with a lot of interesting twists. A few uses of vocabulary that didn't quite suit the period were odd and perhaps some of the customs of the time were stretched, however as it was.... I enjoyed it !

Yes, sometimes things were stretched to fit the gender swap or for the sake of a pun, but I was enjoying it so much I was able to let it go. I really didn't see how certain aspects of the story could happen with a gender swap, and I was very impressed with Ms Croft's ingenuity!.

About Me

I've loved reading for as long as I can remember. I usually read romance, both historical and contemporary but I'm not usually a big fan of chick-lit. My favourite author is Jane Austen, and I really enjoy reading stories inspired by her work. I also love many of the works of L M Montgomery, Georgette Heyer and Mrs Gaskell, amongst others.